


Way With Words

by hitlikehammers



Category: Captain America (Movies), Captain America - All Media Types, Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Bucky Barnes Feels, Bucky Barnes Recovering, Catching Snowflakes, Domestic Fluff, Embedded Images, Established Relationship, Gift Giving, Holiday Cheer, Love, M/M, Multimedia Fic, Post-it Notes, Steve Rogers Feels, Supersoliders in Love, Winter Season, baking cookies, midnight mass
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-12-17
Updated: 2016-12-17
Packaged: 2018-09-08 21:32:26
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,964
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8862874
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/hitlikehammers/pseuds/hitlikehammers
Summary: “You’re perfect, you know that?”
   Bucky’s lips quirk, and god, Steve really doesn’t know what he did without that steady, sly grin in his life for an instant, let alone for years.  “I’m pretty aware, yeah.”-Bucky and Steve, navigating the cold (and warmth) of the holiday season. (Winter Gift-Fic Extravaganza, 5/25)





	

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Lovesfic (me23)](https://archiveofourown.org/users/me23/gifts).



> For [lovesfic](http://lovesfic.tumblr.com/), for the fifth of my of the 25 Days/Fics of my Winter Gift Fic Extravaganza and the prompt: _In a world of lists, where the boys share by writing it all down (and where they think the worst is over), what do the holidays and the winter and the snow mean to them? Is it a tough thing, or is it all new and shiny and wondrous?_ I hope this suits!

Steve moves to the door with all due stealth; he promised Sam a run this morning before the snow was due to fall, but Bucky’s still in bed, and hell if Steve will ever be the one to wake his partner before he wants to be woken, unless they’re _both_ still between the sheets.

That’s when he sees the note, stuck to the handle:

It had started in the early days, when words were scarce between them, with thought was jumbled and memories twisted and gaping, and Steve had tried sketching because it felt right again, with even a shred of Bucky next to him, and Bucky’s stared, just stared at the pad of paper until it hit Steve: until the idea struck, whether it was actually what Bucky couldn’t say or not.

He’d scribbled: _Can I draw you?_ —turned it toward Bucky and waited for him to shift his gaze and read; a gamble and a reach and more than he should have asked for just then and he knew it, but Steve trusted his gut even when it was batshit crazy and he was well aware, and he wasn’t about to stop now.

He wasn’t about to stop now, because for all the shit trusting his instincts had got him into, it also got him _here_.

And when Bucky darted—threatening to anyone, anyone but Steve—and took the pencil from Steve’s hands, when he scribbled back and the hand was steady and the scrawl so familiar, Steve had nearly come apart.

Steve did come apart, a little, when he read the response: _Sure, punk._

And so that had been that.

Good days are what define them, now, for the most part, but they still pull out a pad of bright post-its when the valleys dip amidst their highs, or sometimes just when it’s convenient, sometimes like any normal couple, normal _person_ , and Steve’s proud about a lot of things, but not about this—he uses them too, because sometimes the words are hard all around, and that’s okay.

With Bucky, it’s okay.

So Steve whispers to the ether for JARVIS to up the temperature as he walks out, but every turn around their corner of Central Park that morning is coloured neon yellow, and not for the rising of the sun, because yes, it’s convenient—Steve runs hotter than Bucky; not technically but in terms of preference, and Bucky refuses to let Steve coddle him in the night with the heat dialed up when Steve could wrap around him and keep him warm instead, more than even trade. And yes, it makes sense that Bucky’d leave the note, because Bucky wakes in the middle of most nights—habit from all sorts of times and places, they’ve sorted that much, from Brooklyn to check Steve’s breathing or work the docks late, from the war to stand watch, from…

 _After_.

But it makes sense, perfect sense, that Bucky’d leave the note.

And yet, Steve’s a worrier. Or else: Steve’s a worrier when it comes to what he loves, and there’s nothing he loves in the world—not ever—like he loves Bucky.

So he slips back into the Tower, onto their floor to hear soft Christmas tunes and finds Bucky on the couch wrapped in three blankets, fuzzy-socked toes on the coffee table, mug wrapped in his hands and still steaming: all good signs, and yet.

Steve grabs for the post-it block that’s always in his back pocket and writes quick, sticks it to the wood beside Bucky’s foot:

“Mmm,” Bucky hums, mouth full of his coffee as he reaches out for Steve’s hand in the interim, pulls him to sit next to him. Steve’s unashamed of the way he clutches back, still. Maybe always.

Probably always. 

“M’okay,” Bucky says, smiling around the lip of his cup before handing Steve the mug for a sip in a practiced motion they’ve perfected by now. 

“I’m good,” Bucky grins softly, leaning back into the couch, just a little into the heat of Steve at his side. “Really good.”

Steve buries his face in the crook of Bucky’s neck, and breathes there for a second. Bucky kisses the crown of his head and lets him stay as long as he needs, and Steve does need—and Bucky knows it, Bucky knows and gives and holds him close.

“It’s…” Bucky starts, and it hesitates a little; Bucky knows why Steve’s nervous, still, though, and so he plays idly with Steve’s hair to keep him still, soft against him; “it’s just—”

And Bucky sighs happily under his blankets, and flops them over Steve’s body in kind; he takes a long sip of his too-sweet coffee, sugared further than Steve even thinks _Bucky_ enjoys, and he tucks his feet under Steve’s thighs and murmurs the answer to the first question, the origin, the heat to be turned up that Bucky didn’t just do himself, didn’t just _ask_ himself for JARVIS to handle:

“Indulgent.” 

Steve shifts, glances up and Bucky just leans down and nips his lip.

“Reminds me where we are,” Bucky tells him simply; “that we _can_.”

And here, Bucky warm against him, the apartment warm around them but nothing like the heat in his bones for the fact of Bucky, just _Bucky_ —

Here, like this, Steve thinks he gets it. 

—————————

Steve can’t stop staring at it. Can’t stop watching it. Can’t stop remembering; can barely breath without a catch; cannot fucking _blink_.

Steve can’t stop staring. 

Arms snake around him, unexpected; not unwelcome.

 _Never_.

Lips graze the space below his ear, and one hand raises up to press against the window Steve can’t tear his eyes from. His gaze shifts, though—or broadens, yeah. Broadens, because he can’t look away.

Steve coughs a laugh, finally ducks his head and screws his eyes closed and lets himself see black behind his eyes instead of the endless falling, blowing, spinning, suspended, gasping, whisping, falling, falling, dying, _dying_ —

“Easy,” Bucky whispers to him, and his eyes are still closed when the pad of paper is pressed into his palm, the pen slipped between his fingers.

He doesn’t even open his eyes to write his reply: to confess to prison cells in his dreams, to sprints to slow, to moments too late and gasping sent silent—and fire, leaping into arms that he knew he needed already but that didn’t understand in kind just how _much_ , not _yet_ ; of cities in the air and failures in his heart not only for those people but for the person, the only person who was still out there, still waiting, still _hurting_ except what if he wasn’t, what if Steve was too late for him like he was for this city, this country, for everyone, everything, every _time_ —

The arms around him tighten quick, but then retreat, and Steve nearly sobs when they’re gone, save he doesn’t have the time.

Hands are gathering his too quickly, turning him, lifting his chin with a nudge of the bridge of a nose until Steve’s staring at Bucky’s storm-struck eyes gone soft, as Bucky leads him, walks backward so as to never lose eye contact, so as never to be anywhere but exactly where Steve needs him. 

“Come on.”

And Steve has never been able to deny that voice, that subtle plea, that knowing tone; and more, Steve’s never stopped trusting Bucky with everything he is.

So he goes.

Bucky slips a coat over Steve’s frame that neither of them needs, not anymore, but Steve feels warmer for the gesture than he does for the fabric; he leads Steve to the elevator and takes them not to the street level but to the open roof above the hanger bay, above Tony’s landing pad: up.

He leads Steve out, and he kisses the first snowflake to drop on Steve’s skin right off: delicate and playful and hopeful and pure and Steve laughs, he can’t help it.

Bucky smiles, and lets him go: throws his arms open like a child and spins, tongue out to catch the flakes. He catches Steve’s arm and pulls him into the momentum and Steve’s spinning too, impossible to resist, and the laughter that spills from them both is childlike, unfettered, and as Steve lifts his face to the heavens and tastes the untouched snow, it’s not just the flakes that wet his cheeks, then, because he’s laughing, he’s crying, he’s feeling heavy and lighter and bound up and free and Bucky’s arms are on him, now, braced on his biceps until they both stop, until Steve stops shaking, until he can smile up at Bucky and sigh out the only truth that seems to persist in the whole fucking world:

“You’re perfect, you know that?”

Bucky’s lips quirk, and god, Steve really doesn’t know what he did without that steady, sly grin in his life for an instant, let alone for years.

“I’m pretty aware, yeah.”

Steve kisses him, hard and wondering, desperate and full, and he cannot even imagine it could ever taste of ash.

—————————

Steve’s given up staring out the window at the snow, or else, lamenting it; mourning it as something that it isn’t. He pauses every time he steps outside, instead, and tastes Bucky in the flakes on his tongue, catching them like a child as he grins and makes his way onward wherever he goes. 

But where no one else would see it, because they’d only known him dedicated to the work, to the battle, to justice, the mission, the uniform—where no one else see him burying himself in it to the point of avoidance, Bucky notices. Bucky side-eyes him in the field, and lures him back to bed as many mornings as he can manage, distracts him from not being elsewhere in his head as much as he’s able.

And Steve’s grateful, he is, he just…

Maybe Steve neglected to deal with his own shit these past years, okay? Maybe Steve’s demons are coming out to play now that Bucky’s have decided to learn to rest. 

But Bucky’d left last night on a mission of his own, so now there’s no reason for Steve to hide it, or fight it; no balm to make it manageable, bearable in Bucky’s absence, so Steve’s out of their too-cold, too empty bed and off to pretend there aren’t holes in him when Bucky’s not near him, when Bucky’s away, too far to remind Steve he’s _there_ , and finding him wasn’t a dream and the world, _his_ world isn’t cold like it used to be anymore. 

Steve makes to leave, to pretend again, when he sees the pile of bags and boxes waiting in the kitchen. Steve peels the note off a bag of flour:

It takes a moment for him put it all together: bona fide lard warming to room temperature, sugar; he blinks.

He’s in a kitchen, for a moment, but not this one. He’s looking at the same ingredients, but in different packaging. He’s smelling baking that’s not there, he’s surrounding by every woman in their building, Mrs. Barnes and the girls, and Bucky, _Bucky_ —

Steve’s ma’s recipe. The cookies every family in their building pooled whatever they could to afford the making and baking of, the cookies Steve was somehow, by the grace of God and the care of two people who loved him more than life was well enough to help with more years than he wasn’t: these are Steve’s ma’s cookies, waiting to be made, and Bucky got him the means.

Bucky _remembers_.

Steve can’t stop fucking grinning for the life of him as he goes to the fridge to get the rest of the ingredients he knows are waiting, each one marked with a simple note:

“JARVIS,” Steve calls out, “turn the oven to preheat?”

“Certainly, Captain.”

“And,” Steve smiles broader, a feat he wasn’t sure was possible until that instant exactly; “tell the team I’m not unavailable for the day.”

“It would be my pleasure, sir.”

And Steve can hear the note of approval in the response, and it echoes in Bucky’s tone inside his head; exquisite.

Steve grabs a bowl and starts on the dough with the innocent sort of joy he hasn’t felt since the 30s; since the moment BUcky’s eyes had thawed enough to remind him of a time before any war save against the Brooklyn winters, the city streets. 

—————————

Bucky comes home closer to dawn than to dusk, exhausted in his bones in that beautiful way that makes him feel satisfied: alive.

He strips off his tac-suit with a happy sigh, calling out to JARVIS:

“Send one of the bots up to grab these, Jay? I’m beat, man.”

“Of course, Commander.”

Bucky’s still getting used to the unorthodox promotion, and he’s mulling idly over everything that’s changed, every glorious impossibility that’s reshaped his whole life in the best and brightest of all possible ways as he unhooks and kicks off his boots—and that’s when the scent hits him.

He grins wildly, as he wanders to the kitchen.

There are five full plates awaiting, arranged just so around a single note: in Bucky’s own handwriting, save for one line:

Bucky snags one cookie and chews on his way down the hall, eager to wake his lover up the best way he knows how.

—————————

Midnight mass was always more Steve’s thing. 

But if it matters to Steve is’ always mattered to Bucky, so they find themselves ensconced in a pew, squeezed in alongside all the other twice-a-year semi-faithful. The sing the song and kneel when they’re meant to, say the prayer by rote from school and Bucky thinks Sister Margaret would maybe even be proud of them, if she could see it—or else, proud of Bucky/ Steve was always good at putting the innocent face on, despite being the more devious of the pair.

Well, she’d be proud until Bucky slips a covert hand into his back pocket, standing gracefully only to take Steve’s hand before it’ll be visible above the cut of the wood as they stand. Steve clenches his fist as Bucky lets go to cross himself, watching in his peripherals for Steve to uncrumple the note when they sit.

Steve flushes bright red, and only _just_ keeps from snorting, eyes darting devious to the taunting booths that Bucky’s always had sacrilegious fantasies about. Bucky earns himself a stomp on his newly-shined shoes for the effort, and maybe he pouts a bit as they sing through the rest of the service, because, well.

Christmas is the time for miracles and all that, and he’s been hoping to get Steve in one of those little cubicles for _decades_.

But Steve slams him up against the bricks of the church after the file out, obscured by the snow and the dark of the alley, and well.

He’ll call it progress, when Steve swallows his tongue, and just try again next year.

—————————

Morning comes, and the bed’s empty. Steve doesn’t know how he didn’t wake up when Bucky did, how he managed to stay asleep without Bucky in his arms, but the sheets are still warm, so it can’t have been long. Steve frowns a bit, fearing the worst for just a moment before he smells coffee from the living room, and grins slowly, He pulls on some lounge pants, the rooms warm enough to forgo a shirt, and makes his toward where he knows he’ll find caffeine, and more importantly: Bucky. 

He means to settle next to his lover immediately, kiss a Merry Christmas into his mouth quick and sweet, but the sight of the tree stops him dead. Or else, not the tree, precisely.

More like the towers of wrapped boxes that dwarf the tree twice over. He gapes at it, slackjawed, eyes catching on glittering ribbons, sparkling bows, and a single yellow note at the top of the farthest stack, on the tiniest box he can see in a telling shape and size that Steve can’t think on, can’t wish on just yet:

“Buck,” Steve croaks out, thinking to his not-modest-until-compared-to-this collection of gifts, still stashed in one of the guest closets.

“This is too much.”

Bucky just smirks, and gives Steve the look he’s always given him when he thinks Steve’s being a moron. 

Steve just grabs for him, needy, and draws him willingly into his arms.

“How did you—”

“Web orders,” Bucky leans into him. “Amazon. Straight to the door, Stevie. Feels like,” Bucky sighs a little: “Magic.”

“Still, Bucky,” Steve props his chin on Bucky’s shoulder; “all _this_ —”

“Never,” Bucky cuts him off with a proper kiss, all sweetness and cookie-chocolate and fresh ground coffee and _him_. “I love you.” 

And he draws back to look Steve in the eyes; to cup his cheeks and make sure he pays fucking attention, punk that he is: Steve knows that look.

“So fuckin’ much, Steve. I _love_ you.”

And Steve’s throat is tight with it, no matter how much he knows it, no matter how many times he’s heard it said. So his voice is rough when he frames Bucky’s face in kind.

“I love you so much I don’t know how to be without it, Buck,” Steve whispers, from where impossibly deep. “It’s like half of everything I am, everything I have, every breath or heartbeat, hell, half my fuckin’ _heart_ —”

And Bucky’s kissing him, hard and fast, hands on Steve’s hips now as he drinks him in, as Steve gives into the pressure, the pleasure, the perfection of it all.

“Come on, punk,” Bucky smiles into his lips before he pulls back, and pops a note on Steve’s nose before he bursts out laughing and Steve’s wide-eyed surprised, his faux-annoyance that can’t overcome his own grin as he peels it off to read:

**Author's Note:**

> [Tumblr](http://hitlikehammers.tumblr.com).


End file.
